[Elecraft] NVIS HF vs VHF line-of-sight & CB in 9.0 quakes

[Joe Subich, W4TV]

On 5/1/2017 12:17 AM, Stanley Petrowski wrote:
 > Thanks again Don. I'm working on that.  I agree that this skill set is
 > fast fading. One of the interesting aspects of the ham circles I am
 > affiliated with is that we are all well over 65 and most beyond that.
 > I have secured many hundreds of feet of good quality coax, spools of
 > wire to build traps and more wire to use for building antennas.

Building traps is probably a waste of time.  As I learned from old
timers 40 years ago, your best emergency antennas will be:

1) 40 and 75 meter 1/4 wave sections of wire that can be clamped
    under the bottom of the mast/whip on your mobile antenna and
    pulled over  nearby tree or up a flagpole when parked.

2) two or three parallel dipoles for 75 and 40 meters (or 80, 75
    and 40 meters if you have digital/CW nets) that can be hauled
    up a flag pole, into a tree or up a 30 to 40 foot push up mast
    (with the necessary base and temporary guying) for longer term
    "portable" operations.

    With the advent of 60 meter allocations (particularly if the FCC
    gets off its ass and implements the most recent WARC decisions)
    you may want to consider adding 60 meters to your arsenal.

It may be worthwhile having a pair of end-fed half wave (EFHW)
antennas in your tool kit - one for 80/40 and one for 60/30.  Put
insulators in the middle and at 30 feed from the feed end so they
can be pulled up a flag pole, tree, or temporary mast as either
an inverted V or inverted L.  With transceivers  like the K3 that
have wide range tuners, the EFHW may be easier to store and deploy
than the parallel dipole/inverted V and will provide the same
NVIS performance as the traditional "maypole" installations.

In any case,  I recommend the ARRL Antenna Book, ARRL's book on
portable antennas, the ARRL series "ARRL's Wire Antenna Classics"
(particularly N0SS's article "An Easy-up and easy to store Field
Day Dipole"), and the ARRL series "ARRL Antenna Compendium"
(Volumes 1-8).  If you *study* the Antenna Book, you will get a
good understanding of the theory wile the Antenna Wire Classics
and Antenna Compendium series will provide a wealth of practical
ideas.

73,

    ... Joe, W4TV